26 September 2008

For those of you not down with the C-Land lingo, you may as well stop reading, because you don't understand my people.

In the spirit of a great blues musician, I've come here to proclaim my troubles to the world in hopes of gaining some relief:

Like golf*, Candyland is a game of sheer chance and luck designed to illustrate the futility of continuing to live. I'm a relative newcomer to this game, having come from a house full of boys and a wannabe-boy, but we bought it for my daughter at Christmas because J- is a lifetime fan, and D- has since wanted to play it at least once a week.**

So without toughened skin from years of experience, I was distinctly unprepared for the feeling of the potent one-two punch in the gut that is your opponent drawing a single orange block card and then the pink Lolly card. I got Rainbow railroaded. Even with him getting stuck in some licorice and losing a turn, I was toe-tagged after only 20 cards.

Twenty cards! That's ten turns. There are over 60 cards in the deck, and we've been known to go through all of them before finishing.

This site, which is my kind of site, states that the average two-person Candyland game takes, mathematically speaking, 52 cards.*** So this was clearly an aberration existing only to balance out the 200-card games out there, and my son was given the plum role of The Hand of Fate.

Care to guess what I heard from this little upstart, who regularly has to be reminded (incredibly unselfishly, I might add) which direction he's supposed to be heading on the board, and whose backside I've so graciously returned to him 95% of the time we've gone head to head? "Oh wow Dad, what luck I'm having! That's the way the cards were cut, I guess," or some such zen platitude?

How about instead you guess, "Ha, ha" as he cruised towards the finish? You'd be warmer than Gloppy on fondue night.

* For instance, I once spent a week going by the nickname "Tiger" and during that time I did not win any sweet green jackets or get paid millions of dollars to wear one hat versus another. Go ahead and try to explain that one away.

** Once equals one session of at least three games...

*** Am I revealing too much about myself in having sought out this guy's painstaking Candyland analysis?

41 comments:

You are about the funniest person I've read in a long time. I love games, love playing games, live to win, have never been able to figure out how to let my kids win - but even I would have been grateful for a Candyland game this short. That's a game I never quite bonded with - maybe because it is all chance and I couldn't always make the kids cry.

candyland. i hated that game when my kids were little. the good thing was that i could sleep between my turns. well as long as the kids weren't arguing about which direction they were supposed to be headed. another game that i couldn't stand...hi ho cherry-o. talk about boring!

You're a better man than me. I'm what most people would call a "sore loser". I'd be apt to clear the table with one sweeping motion of my arm, sending game pieces and cards scattering everywhere. How am I supposed to teach Tyler that it's ok to lose, if I can't be gracious in my own losing?

My only chance will be to cheat so that I win EVERY TIME. Then I'll tell Tyler that it's ok to lose, and all he needs to do is keep practicing.

I'm loving the comments by "laggin" above me! I experienced a few melt downs w/my kids when I won Candyland and then I learned my lesson and started throwing EVERY game! I was like. "I don't know how you got to skip all the way to Queen Frostine again...this must be your lucky day!" sigh

So he is learning. Ha ha instead of let's play again so you can win this time. It bothers you not to win Candyland?? Candyland?? Really M-could beat you at Candyland because it's so random. Now if he beats you at Battleship then you can start to worry.

I have NEVER won this stupid game. It is my kid's favorite. I don't cheat, I don't throw the game (I'm a firm believer a parent should never throw a game, maybe help a little, but never lose on purpose).

It always starts out the same with us, I'm all "how you like me now, sucka" to my 6yo, until the "futility of continuing to live" (love that) sets in and then I end up letting her look through all the cards before she picks one so we can get this infernal game over with before my birth certificate expires and because, uhm, "My Name is Earl" is about to come on so,yeah-

Debbie: Wow, thank you-- you've made my day two days in a row now, once reading it and now responding to it.

The problem with a Candyland game this short is invites more games afterwards than it would if it dragged out a bit. Still, I'm glad you're a member of the Don't Let Kids Win army, of which I am the merciless general, sitting safely in my citadel plotting and scheming. (See my expansion on this theme below in my reply to Laggin and Mrs. B. Roth.)

Chris: Oh believe me, I've taken him out already in most of those games, because he insists on trying to play even though I warn him they're meant for "older kids".

Goldfish: My sources tell me it's currently running about 1.8:1.

Natalie: Sleep between turns? What were they doing? You pull a card and move to that color. That's one thing I don't like-- I can't space out or do some other little thing between turns.

Always Home and Uncool: But who's counting, right? Have you evened things out yet?

Joe: You and I have more in common than you think, my friend. And I like the moral of your story-- that's lemons from lemonade right there.

Rikki: I haven't heard of such a thing, but it sounds intriguing. We'd probably be better off waiting till M- wasn't waiting with an open mouth outside where the shapes come out.

Laggin: I never throw games. I thought I mentioned that in a post before (I just alluded to it above in my response to Debbie), but since I can't remember which post it would have been, it may have been a comment at someone else's blog.

I don't believe in it-- it takes away the achievement of a genuine win. Anyone can win a board game if they try enough. Unless they're trying against my wife, in which case they are SOL, for reasons unknown to everyone.

Keely: Nope, cause people would whine about me taking their money. I don't waste my time playing for chips or Hot Wheels.

* They renamed her Princess Frostine at some point in the last decade or so, though I'm not sure why they would give up that nice internal rhyme. Who cares if people assume she's married to King Kandy, thereby diluting her perceived power and influence?

Diane: Just the other day, I played Trouble for what was basically the first time, and all I could think of was that it seemed exactly like Parcheesi and Sorry and a couple others I can't think of. I also realized that all this time I had confused it with Perfection.

Mama Dawg: Hey, buddy, watch it. Care to dance with the devil in the pale moonlight? Come on down (up), anytime, mac.

Mary: It bothers me to lose that badly, like the universe is conspiring against me. M- couldn't beat me only because she would be disqualified for repeatedly sucking on her game piece and forgetting where it was on the board.

We tried Battleship one day, and let's just say I'm pretty sure I'm safe for a few years...

Nanny Goats in Panties: Madame, when praising me so highly, and Stumbling my post, you may reuse whatever words you like.

Thing was, when he tries out the teasing now and then, he doesn't get in your face or really sing it, like you'd expect, but instead he just states it with an air of inevitability and duty, which feels somehow worse. I do not react well to it.

You need to isolate him on this, by encouraging everyone else to stop playing games with her immediately when she starts cheating. Good luck combating this truly domestic terrorist.

Kori: Replace it with Risk, because that game is awesome, though it may be in a much different age range.

Dr. Dan, family therapist, says that 2 is more than old enough to start learning where Kamchatka is, and more importantly, the ways to determine what the "acceptable casualty level" is versus your tactical goals.

MamaNeena: Two cards?? After looking over the board (we played again this morning...), I would say the fewest cards you could win in is 4 (per player).

I'm sure that site shows the precise answer in a table, in case I'm wrong, but I'd say you could get Princess Frostine, a double green, a double orange, and then a double purple, yellow, blue, or orange to win in four cards.

I just want to know why they didn't just go ahead and make a King Kandy card, for the immediate kill shot, which could conceivably drop right on the first turn. How awesome would that be??

Happyhoursue: See my comment to Christy above for the updated title for Her Majesty. I think if I was fitting through a hole that shape, much less that size, I'd need to do some serious self-reflection.

threeboys1mommy: What, no Texas Hold 'Em? Everyone's so nuts about it these days that they switched Bond's game to it in Casino Royale, for no acceptable reason.

jenboglass: Oh I am well-acquainted with Sorry. And I'm sorry for that. I still say Candyland is worse for its total simplicity.

Mrs. B. Roth: Really, never? You need to sign up for some monitoring by the Guinness Book people, because you are defying the laws of probability.

And hallelujah for your stance-- see my comments to Debbie and Laggin above for my support for this. We are siblings in arms, comrade.

Ringleader: Nooooooo! Never!! Step away from the edge. Just play 'em as they come, and tell the kid to hurry up or you win by forfeit. That will solve the time and boredom problem while also maintaining the integrity of the game. It's not like either of you need time between turns to strategize.

Miss Grace: The very idea of that freaks me out. My dislike/distain/distrust for becostumed characters is well-documented and unwavering. The worst thing about them, I've decided, is that they don't talk.

Who decided that was a better idea than doing bad impressions??

Animatronics are probably worse. This all makes me want to watch that episode of Simpsons where they go to Itchy and Scratchy Land.

Manager Mom: That sounds pretty sweet. You should get some sociologists to study you guys to see how that affects the parent-child dynamics. I think it could be a huge stress outlet as he reaches preteenagerhood (what a Frankensteinish word... not that "Frankensteinish" isn't as much or moreso...).

Deb: I'm glad I stopped by, too. I agree that Chutes and Ladders can get interminable, but I'll always have a soft spot for it because I used to play it all the time with my mom before we went out to meet the kindergarten bus.

You're lucky-- you were thatclose to beginning a new life with one hand and one paw.

Mrs4444: Just the other day, I made the executive decision to play the version where you ignore the pink picture cards that would send you backwards. It was just too heartbreaking for him, and too irritating to me whenever we got so tantalizingly close to finishing.

I had no idea Candy Land was so well studied. It's so unfair, but so is "Life". No, seriously, I mean the game, "Life" - have you tried THAT one yet? It's painfully agonizingly long and labor intensive, and the kids LOVE it.

I just noticed a few comments from you that got waylaid into my Junk (for shame!) mailbox. So thx for stopping by, LD and I appreciate the bloggy treats!

Reminds me of playing old maid with Daddy. He would totally play mind games by pulling one card up in his set. For awhile it was always the old maid then he started switching it up and it was totally unpredictable. Fun times, lol.

überburber: It does seem to be surprisingly well studied, but I think that's just because it's a straightforward math game, like flipping a coin. There's absolutely no human element to it, no strategy, no decisions to make.

I'll admit I'm a fan of Life, though it is a long one. But I give it the edge over Monopoly, because that game drags on for hours with no end in sight, until someone resigns out of sheer exhaustion. At least Life is relatively finite. Just like the real thing.

That's weird... should I take that as a comment on my value as a person? Excuse me, I have some very dark poetry to go write (sniffle).

TerriRainer: I think you should start playing D-, because it's hard NOT to win most of the time.

The Microblogologist: I haven't played Old Maid in a long, long time-- I forgot it existed till now! I play those kind of mind games with J-, and that same one specifically when playing Epic Duels (awesome game). And here I thought I was so original...

Mama Dawg: I don't think it's that odd-- he always tries so hard for it. I'd like to see him really step outside of himself more. He did for the most part in About Schmidt, but it may be too late for him to really disappear into a role.

Dan, I realize that I shouldn't teach my kids that they always win by throwing games. I know it's wrong, (and just for the record, now that they're older, I don't do it anymore b/c we're out of the tantrum stage) and I admire your noble stance. HOWEVER, Candyland is pure torture and merits an exception (frankly, it used to bug the shit out of me!)

And yes, they definitely should've kept Queen Frostine as her name--what's with that?